Juvander Consulting

Released: TFS Bug Item Synchronizer 2.5 for Quality Center

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:21:00 GMT

New version of TFS Bug Item Synchronizer released.

Major changes from version 2.4 are following:

New internal database version
Removed support for TFS2005 client. TFS2005 server is still supported via TFS2008 SP1 (and above) client
Fixes for html and plaintext conversions related to QC11
Support for value map for ErrorDB value from QC
Support for TFS workitem user name fields for cases when there are more than one user with same display name (for TFS2010 only)
ValueMap and CompareRule have now option for IgnoreCase, default is still false

Full Releases Notes and TFS Bug Item Synchronizer setup can be downloaded from here: http://www.juvander.fihttp://onroad.juvander.fi/Downloads.aspx.

Setup includes 14 days fully functional trial version which we also give support.

TFS Bug Item Synchronizer can be purchased from http://www.juvander.fihttp://onroad.juvander.fi/Order.aspx.

For questions, just let us know: https://www.juvander.fihttp://onroad.juvander.fi/ContactUs.aspx.

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Tags: TFS Bug Item Synchronizer

Category: News

Category: Releases

Almost there, new version of TFS Bug Item Synchronizer

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 07:27:00 GMT

As time passes, it is time again to release a new version of this popular tool.

Biggest change this time is internal: TFS Bug Item Synchronizer is getting new internal database.

Previous one had couple of issues that especially big installations are suffering from. These are things like

Fragmentation. As time goes by, database gets fragmented to to defragment database file takes time. On some cases this was taking 30-60 minutes which is quite a lot when it is done at DBService startup.
File size. Database file size was on some cases growing quite a lot, especially if defragmentation was not run on regular intervals.

So to fix these, we had to change internal database and it actually gives some more possibilities as well, but those are coming a bit later on.

Upgrade from version 2.4 and below old database to new need to be done extra carefully, all needed steps are already documented in the Release Notes found in downloads.

There are also some enhancements how html is converted into plain text, especially due to QC11 having more html tags as versions before. There are still issues with this, especially with content that has not been edited in QC11 but migrated from previous versions, but in these cases the old method will be used.

ValueMap and CompareRule have now attribute to specify that values used in these two are not case sensitive in comparisons.

One last note on one change: TFS2010 is showing usually usernames in format of ‘firstname lastname’, but in case there are two persons with exactly same name, this is not the case. In this case format changes to ‘fristname lastname (DOMAIN\username)’. In the username list there might be two entries like this:

John Smith (DOMAIN1\a12345)
John Smith (DOMAIN2\john)

Support for this was added into TFS Bug Item Synchronizer as well, so username resolve works just fine on these as well and username part gets correctly into QC.

This new TFS Bug Item Synchronizer version 2.5 for Quality Center is now on the final stage of testing and will be released on 31st of January 2012.

Beta version is already out in the download section, if somebody wants to give it a try. We will give full support for evaluating it and even turning that into production version – if needed.

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Tags: TFS Bug Item Synchronizer

Category: General

Released: OffRoad 2.8 for HP Quality Center and IBM Rational Quality Manager

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:16:00 GMT

OffRoad 2.8 is now available.

This release has following changes:

Internal enhancements
Test Run parameter handling
Temporary Test Set to select test cases from multiple test sets for execution
Capability to select which defects are uploaded back to server
External integration enhancements
Custom filter for downloading defects
Performance Improvements

OffRoad setup and Release notes and can be found at downloads section. Setup package is full installation and includes also 14 days trial license.

OffRoad 2.8 can be purchased through http://www.juvander.fihttp://onroad.juvander.fi/Purchase.aspx.

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Tags: OffRoad

Category: News

Category: Releases

Migrating from Community Server to Dotnetnuke

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 09:32:00 GMT

Our first community site to share information and provide forum for our users was launched back in June 2006 and was built using Telligent Community Server –product. License cost for initial purchase was 449 USD.

On 2009 it was already seen that the current CS2007 version was outdated and so there was an request sent to Telligent for an upgrade offer. Now the price was up to 3500 USD and decision was made to still continue with current version.

End of 2011 as new browsers and browser versions have been appearing CS2007 was no longer supporting these, only real supported browser was Internet Explorer which was not really enough for us.

Telligent was totally out of the picture, their price for the upgraded site was now up to 50000 GBP which was totally unacceptable for us!

What we had on our Community Server were Blogs, Forums and Downloads in use. Our own http://www.juvander.fi was running own custom developed ASP.NET pages, plan was to migrate all of these into one product.

So search started to find an replacement product.

IPS Platform

We had a trial run with IPS Platform, but pretty soon figured out that there was no way to do a trial migration in their hosted environment where we were playing with it. Their support was quite helpful but limitations existed so we decided to to abandon this path.

Price for that would have been quite right, features as well but there were another things against it:

Built with PHP. As we are working with Microsoft products, this would have been new tool to be added. Not good.
Requires MySQL. Same as above, not really wanting to add another unknown product to play with.

Joomla, Simple Machines, Vbulletin

These were also under investigations, but things we learned from IPS Platform already made us to abandon these even sooner. PHP = NoGo, MySQL=NoGo.

Others

There are some site do help you comparing these, such as http://www.forum-software.org/forum-comparator. Very good site to get an overview on what’s out there. But on this site, no Dotnetnuke mentioned (as some other CMS systems missing as well).

So search started to narrow down to products built with ASP.NET and SQLServer and it really narrowed us down to Dotnetnuke. This tool was already in the picture back in 2009 on first round, but at those days it really sounded too complicated compared to CS2007.

Trial migration from CS2007 to Dotnetnuke

When searching around, found some pages mentioning doing migration from Community Server to other products helped a lot:

This was really helpful and guided us on the right direction on how to migrate blog posts: http://khason.net/dev/how-to-migrate-from-cs2007-to-wordpress-movable-type-or-any-other-blog-engine-supports-xml-rpc-with-c/
This we used as a base for migrating users and forum posts: http://www.dnndaily.com/tips/itemId/33060/Converting-From-CommunityServer-to-DotNetNuke-Intr

We also had our Download section on CS2007 which we use to distribute downloadable products to our customers, for this part we simply looked how data looked on CS2007 and made totally new conversion tool for it.

First trial was for the forum posts as it was already known that blog posts can be done via XMLRPC. We tried with the sql approach, but it had some issues on creating forums and updating post counts correctly. Sql was written for previous Community Server version so obviously something had changed.

But, posts were there, that was the main thing so.

Second trial was against a blog.

This had some interesting things like

Handling images, both thumbnails and full images
References to other parts of the site

This post was the thing that opened our eyes on this. We wrote a simple tool similar to this to

Retrieve all posts
Download and fix image references
Post these fixed blog posts to DNN together with images

Last thing were the downloadable files. This was pretty simple sql approach using custom application using Community Server API to retrieve posts and attachments and post these into DNN Repository module.

User migration was last thing to do and for that we used this as a base to see how users are treated. Again, there were some issues on migrating users using provided SQL statements, so we ended up writing our own migration tool to do same thing which allowed us to do some custom conversions as well.

So everything was set for the full run.

Migration from CS2007 to Dotnetnuke

We started migration this time from users. So all users migrated first to DNN. For this we had to fine tune some parameters for ASPNetSqlMembershipProvider to be the same as on CS2007 (mainly to preserve passwords).

Next was blog posts, migrated one blog at a time. Before migration blogs were created manually.

Forum posts were simple enough, first created manually forum on DNN and then migrate all relevant posts into that.

Downloads were same thing, first create categories for folders from Community Server and then insert all downloads into these.

For quick migration our shopping tool was converted from plain ASP.NET to DNN module, same with some other custom controls.

Lucky for us ASP.NET is working on both new and old so this was a simple thing to do.

Last thing was to create and copy content from www.juvander.fi and everything was there.

Some things that are still unfinished:

Redirects from old content to new. There are lots of references to old community posts and we are adding those as they are found. Search engines have been busy lately to update their references, CS2007 with tags is creating lots of followed links and now all of those are gone. In the future this will hopefully take some load out from our site as well.
Fine tuning of skin that was taken into use.
Tuning DNN environment. Lots of new things to see how they are going, like cache and logging.

Dotnetnuke impressions this far

Migration to DNN was done just before Christmas Eve, which was perfect time for it. Nobody was doing work at that time which gave us more time to verify that everything was running as expected.

There are few things that Community Server had a lot better than DNN, but we are working on these:

Forum management
User management, like:

Site admin gets notification on new user registration, but there seems to be no way to set both sender and receiver address for this e-mail separately nor there is a way to disable this feature. This would help us on not getting not needed e-mails.

Repository module is not perfect, but already found a way to modify that into right direction
Overall skinning is a bit difficult to understand first, but we can live with that and educate us on that.

All in all, everything seems now to be working and what is not working we make it to work as soon we find out on it.

Good product so far, well worth the money and time spent on it to get it up and running.

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Category: General

Exporting and Importing data from QC using Import Export Utility

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:47:33 GMT

To show how Import Export Utility is used to export test cases with design steps follow this procedure.

Import Export Utility can be downloaded from here.

From startup screen select first Connect QC:

Fill in server url, login name and password and then Domain & Project:

Then switch to Test Cases selection mode. This shows test plan tree in the selection area:

Next step is to pick test cases. This can be done either by individual test case or by folders:

At this point it is possible select three different export targets:

Excel, data is exported into Excel format
Xml, data is exported into xml format
Local DB, this uses Import Export utility internal format which is used to transfer data from one project to another

By selection Excel, you will just pick a location, file name and in Save as type Excel version (2003/2007/2010).

For Excel and Xml, you will pick needed fields, for Local DB option all fields are exported.

To pick which fields you want to include in your export:

You can also reorder fields in this dialog. TC stands for Test Case, DS is Design Step.

By selecting Ok it start the export process and for Excel and xml export target types you will be asked to open this or not:

For Local DB option it is possible to import data from sdf file back to Quality Center.

From main screen switch to Import from Local DB:

First click Select Source to pick your previously created sdf file and from that file select project:

Then click Select Destination as your QC server, domain and project.

At this point you have possibility to Ignore fields my right mouse clicking selected field;

Or modify with what field this is mapped to in Destination Project:

You can also see which fields are Not in Destination by scrolling down:

Same modify and ignore fields are available here as well. Note that not all of the fields are modifiable through this tool so some of those are listed in here as well.

Once all fields are ok and verified, select Import to Quality Center:

For large amount of data this will take some time, depending on your server and network connection speed.

After this you should login into your destination project and verify that all data is there.

Note that it is not recommended to view destination project structures while import is ongoing as this might put locks which do not allow updates to that test case.

Same method goes for other entities as well.

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Released: TFS Bug Item Synchronizer 2.4 for Quality Center

Mon, 09 May 2011 13:24:00 GMT

Minor update to TFS Bug Item Synchronizer for Quality Center.

Changes from version 2.3 are following:

Removed support for TestDirector 8.0 and Quality Center 8.2
Added support to include Related Item Links from TFS to Quality Center and direct Requirement – Defect links from Quality Center to TFS
UpdateOtherField now accepts also valuemapname so that it is possible to define valuemap for these values as well

Full Release Notes can be found in here: http://onroad.juvander.fi/Community/files/folders/documents/tags/TFS+Bug+Item+Synchronizer/Release+Notes/2.4/default.aspx

Installation includes 14 days fully functional trial version, full version can be purchased from http://www.juvander.fi/Order.aspx.

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Released: OffRoad 2.7 for HP Quality Center and IBM Rational Quality Manager

Thu, 05 May 2011 15:05:30 GMT

OffRoad 2.7 is now available.

This release is minor release, mainly addressing supported server versions.

This release adds support for

Quality Center 11.0

and removes support for

Quality Center version 8.2
TestDirector 8.0

So OffRoad now supports:

IBM Rational Quality Manager
Quality Center versions 10.0, 9.2 and 9.0

Full Release Notes can be found in here: OffRoad 2.7 Release Notes.

OffRoad 2.7 for Quality Center and IBM Rational Quality Manager is found on the download folder. This is full installation and includes also 14 days trial license.

OffRoad 2.7 can be purchased through here.

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Released: OffRoad 2.6 for HP Quality Center and IBM Rational Quality Manager

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 11:24:00 GMT

We are happy to announce that OffRoad 2.6 is now available.

This version adds now support for IBM Rational Quality Manager.

So OffRoad now supports:

IBM Rational Quality Manager
Quality Center versions 10.0, 9.2, 9.0 and 8.2
TestDirector version 8.0

OffRoad makes test execution possible in disconnected environments. This means that test planning and analysing is done fully on the Test Management server, but actual test execution is no longer tied to certain location or network connection.

Major changes in this version are following:

Support for IBM Rational Quality Manager
Select which defects to upload
Select test cases for execution in Execution Grid
Masked field support
AutoSave functionality
Added check to see which fields should be visible in AddNewDefect form
OffRoad external interface enhancements (used when integrating OffRoad to internal systems)

Full Release Notes can be found in here: OffRoad 2.6 Release Notes.

OffRoad 2.6 for Quality Center and IBM Rational Quality Manager is found on the download folder. This is full installation and includes also 14 days trial license.

OffRoad 2.6 can be purchased through here.

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Released: TFS Bug Item Synchronizer 2.3 for Quality Center

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 15:41:08 GMT

Next major version of popular TFS Bug Item Synchronizer for Quality Center is now released.

TFS Bug Item Synchronizer is an tool which allows testing and development teams to work together using tools built for their usage. Testers enter defects in Quality Center and when defect is created and updated into TFS, developer can fix it, link all changes to it and mark it as fixed. After this the tester will continue process on Quality Center side to verify the fix. Similar to this developer can create a work item and have it synchronized over to Quality Center for testers to verify the fix.

With this tool it is possible to synchronize both Quality Center Defects and Requirements with TFS work items.

Testers will only need to use Quality Center and developers TFS, no need to have both applications on both teams as this tool works totally on the server side.

This version supports

Quality Center 11.0 Patch 1
Quality Center 10.0
Quality Center 9.2
Quality Center 9.0
Quality Center 8.2
TestDirector 8.0
Team Foundation Server 2010
Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1
Team Foundation Server 2005

Major new features include following:

Support for Quality Center 11
ErrorDBSyncStatus field is no longer mandatory field on Quality Center side
Support to update BG_SUBJECT
Compare Rules works also with RegularExpressionMatch
Individual field map can be disabled
All tools are included in the main setup

Full Release Notes can be found in here: TFS Bug Item Synchronizer 2.3 for Quality Center Release Notes

TFS Bug Item Synchronizer 2.3 for Quality Center can be downloaded from Download section in this site.

Installation includes 14 days fully functional trial version, full version can be purchased from http://www.juvander.fi/Order.aspx.

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Released Import Export Utility 2.0 for Quality Center

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:19:00 GMT

Import Export Utility 2.0 for Quality Center has now new more intuitive user interface to help users to

Export Requirements, Test Cases and Design Steps from Quality Center into Excel 2003/2007/2010, xml and local database formats
Import from local database back to Quality Center project
Import of data works also between different Quality Center servers, server versions and projects
Export and Import works on manual test cases and supports also Design Steps with Linked Test cases, parameters and attachments (attachments only using local database format)

Requirements can be selected from requirement tree (with or without Linked Test Cases), Test Cases either from Test Plan tree or by Test Sets.

This versions works with

Quality Center 9.0, 9.2, 10.0 and 11.0

Tool can be downloaded from http://onroad.juvander.fi/Community/files/ and purchased from http://www.juvander.fi/Purchase.aspx.

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